Dealing with the Devil

We’ve the devil here!

“Would you please visit our home? We’ve a devil here!” So I answer the call and make the visit. Dealing with the devil is a complex and murky business. That’s because he lies. You can’t figure him out. He hides behind addictions and simple egotism. He shelters behind mental, emotional and relational illnesses. He rarely shows his face and bares his teeth and snarls like the beast he really is. When you visit someone who claims to be struggling with Satan they are usually just sick in some way or another.

It seems every year now another exorcism movie is released, but dealing with the devil is more often mundane than sensational. When addressing the issue of demon possession and exorcism with teenagers I always play it down. The proper response to demonic possession and exorcism is not to sensationalize it. I stress how rare true possession is and warn teens about involvement in the occult and the fringes of rock music, video games and horror movies where vulnerable young people can also be sucked into the dark side by a fascination with evil. I also remind them that the best defense against the devil is a simple, humble faith. “Just trust in the Lord. Live your faith best you can. Be cheerful and hopeful and happy. Try to be normal. Try to be good. Seek light. Seek love. Seek beauty. Seek Truth.” Then, I assure them, “You have nothing to fear.”

Indeed, an ordinary humble, common sense, cheerful and joyful Christian is invulnerable to the devil’s subterfuge. We must always remember that the devil is a proud spirit. He takes himself so very seriously, and what he cannot understand and what he cannot bear is the sound of Christians engaged in that most serious of past-times – being happy. A cheerful spirit is actually a supernatural gift. Joy is the language of heaven. Laughter – real joyful, self-abandoned, weeping, gasping-with-hilarity laughter is never heard in hell.

This is why those humans who take themselves so very soberly and seriously are on the down escalator to the Father below. “Angels” G.K.Chesterton reminds us “can fly because they take themselves lightly.” It is the serious faced self righteous Catholics who are the church’s worst enemy, and they exist on both ends of the Catholic spectrum: one thinks of the glowering ranks of ultra conservative Catholics with their conspiracy theories, their mantillas and their Latin missals. They’re a match for the seriously self righteous and angry “dissenting Catholics” with their wimmin ‘priests’, rainbow sashes and rainforest salvation campaigns. Chesterton would encourage them, “Be more like the angels. Lighten up.”

I am not arguing, of course, that we should not take the devil and the spiritual battle seriously. Indeed we should. As St Paul writes, “We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against spiritual wickedness in the heights.” We’re engaged in a battle to be sure; a battle with eternal consequences and eternal rewards. What is in question is how we engage in that battle.

I think we need a bit of swash and buckle. What is required is that we get out our broad brimmed hat and swoop the white plume. We need to buckle on our sword and be no less than a sort of spiritual Cyrano de Bergerac. (If you are not familiar with the greatest romantic hero ever to grace the stage, then I recommend the film version with Gerard Depardieu, who was born to play the role) Cyrano is a clown and a cavalier. With his sword and his poetry and his profound proboscis, he is a cross between Jimmy Durante and D’Artagnan. He sallies forth to confront hypocrisy and foolishness and greed and lust with a noble heart, a high calling and wit that is as sharp as his rapier.

We may not be exorcists, but each one of us is called to engage in the spiritual battle, and we will succeed best when we take the battle seriously, and ourselves not so seriously. During Lent that battle intensifies. As Christ went into the desert to take the battle to the devil himself, so we should engage with the forces of darkness with a new intention, with clear mindedness, good humor and the confidence that comes with knowing Christ, through whom all evil is overcome.

We are happy warriors!

Launching into battle in this way means we are happy warriors. We fight with a spring in our step and a smile on our face. The gospel says when we fast we should wash our face and put on a smile, and the spiritual writers speak always of keeping a ‘joyful Lent.’ When we face temptation we should overcome not just with a serious resolve and a whopping amount of self control, but we should also have the wisdom and insight to see the temptation for what it is and side step the attack and parry with a counter thrust in the robust spirit of a jaunty swordsman or a laughing cavalier.

All of this because we remember, and look forward to Easter Day. My favorite image of the resurrection is the painting by Piero della Francesca, with the triumphant Christ stepping from the tomb over the sleeping soldiers bearing a white flag with a red cross. There’s an air of jaunty sobriety about it. There’s a joyful insouciance about it – with the incongruous flag, the light of morning and the unexpected twist in the plot.

There’s the sword that strikes the devil’s heart – that God outfoxed him, and the angels not only rejoiced, but I think they laughed with joy at the final victory.

And so should we.

Fr Dwight Longenecker’s latest book is The Gargoyle Code. Written in the style of C.S.Lewis’ Screwtape Letters, it is also a Lent book. The diabolical correspondence begins on Shrove Tuesday and ends on Easter Day. Learn more about it here.

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Fr. Dwight Longenecker is an American who has spent most of his life living and working in England. Fr Dwight was brought up in an Evangelical home in Pennsylvania. After graduating from the fundamentalist Bob Jones University with a degree in Speech and English, he went to study theology at Oxford University. He was eventually ordained as an Anglican priest and served as a curate, a school chaplain in Cambridge and a country parson.

Realizing that he and the Anglican Church were on divergent paths, in 1995 Fr. Dwight and his family were received into the Catholic Church. He spent the next ten years working as a freelance Catholic writer, contributing to over twenty-five magazines, papers and journals in Britain, Ireland and the USA.

Fr. Dwight is the editor of a best-selling book of English conversion stories called The Path to Rome - Modern Journeys to the Catholic Faith. He has written Listen My Son - a daily Benedictine devotional book which applies the Rule of St Benedict to the task of modern parenting. St Benedict and St Thérèse is a study of the lives and thought of two of the most popular saints.

In the field of Catholic apologetics, Fr. Dwight wrote Challenging Catholics with John Martin, the former editor of the Church of England Newspaper. More Christianity is a straightforward and popular explanation of the Catholic faith for Evangelical Christians. Friendly and non-confrontational, it invites the reader to move from 'Mere Christianity' to 'More Christianity'. Mary-A Catholic Evangelical Debate is a debate with an old Bob Jones friend David Gustafson who is now an Evangelical Episcopalian.

Fr. Dwight’s Adventures in Orthodoxy is described as ‘a Chestertonian romp through the Apostles’ Creed.’ He wrote Christianity Pure&Simple which was published by the Catholic Truth Society in England and Sophia Institute Press in the USA. He has also published How to Be an Ordinary Hero and his book Praying the Rosary for Inner Healing was published by Our Sunday Visitor in May 2008. His latest books are The Gargoyle Code - a book in the tradition of Screwtape Letters and a book of poems called A Sudden Certainty, Adventures in Orthodoxy and The Romance of Religion.

Fr. Dwight has contributed a chapter to the third volume of the best selling Surprised by Truth series and is a regular contributor to Crisis Magazine, St Austin Review, This Rock, Our Sunday Visitor and National Catholic Register. Fr. Dwight has also written a couple of children’s books, had three of his screenplays produced, and is finishing his first novel. He’s working on a book on angels and his autobiography: There and Back Again.

In 2006 Fr. Dwight accepted a post as Chaplain to St Joseph’s Catholic School in Greenville, South Carolina. This brought him and his family back, not only to his hometown, but also to the American Bible belt, and hometown of Bob Jones University. In December 2006 he was ordained as a Catholic priest under the special pastoral provision for married former Anglican clergy. He is the Administrator of Our Lady of the Rosary Church in Greenville, South Carolina, and an oblate of Belmont Abbey.

Fr. Dwight enjoys movies, blogging, books, and visiting Benedictine monasteries. He’s married to Alison. They have four children, named Benedict, Madeleine, Theodore and Elias. They live in Greenville, South Carolina with a black Labrador named Anna, a chocolate lab called Felicity, cat named James and various other pets.

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4 Comments

The best advice I ever heard about dealing with the devil comes from a movie, whose title escapes my feeble memory, ” The first rule of dealing with the devil is , ‘ Don’t deal with the devil’.” I have come to the conclusion, after many years in Satan’s army, that his ruses and lies never change. Once you come to that realization, it is fairly easy to spot them. Having been snatched back into the army of God, I realize that the devil is not even worth my time. I do not even address him in second person. Instead, I ask The Second Person to take care of the situation and banish the devil. Jesus knows a whole lot more about handling the devil than I do, and I have been taught to defer to proved experts in, excuse the pun, devilish situations. Nobody has proved Himself better and more frequently than Jesus. Be blessed

20 some years ago, when I was living and working in the U.S. I was given a Spiritual Warfare booklet entitled “Daily Prayers for Committed Christians”. As a committed Catholic Christian I use this booklet as a guide whenever I encounter evil forces at work around me and use it to cast out all sort of evil spirits, and it always works, Praise God!. Whenever I feel the presence of evil, I start praying “The Prayer of Authority” casting out evil spirits that lurks within our home, this usually happens at night time between 12 midnight up to 3am, which are to me the unholy hours. Now, I no longer feel the presence of evil at our humble home and seldom perform spiritual warfare against them because I firmly believe that our Lord Jesus, Mother Mary, the saints and angels protect me and my loved ones each day. I believe that heaven and earth are joined together. Our Lord Jesus is present in each and every human being here on earth and is with us all the time. He is omnipresent because He has to judge each and everyone of us for what we have done and said to others, good or evil.

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